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around mountain climbing and idealized mountains as natural peaks over which one must

seek mastery.

 With the Primitivist and Expressionist movements gutted by the reactionary

Right, the Left stepped in to determine how (and why) the movements had failed so

badly. The criticisms revolved around two main points: the art of the modernist

movement was too subjective and the stance the artists took was not critical enough -

they were mired in their bourgeois upbringing. These views are most easily illustrated in

Georg Lukacs' stinging criticism of Expressionism, "Realism in the Balance." He

criticizes the subjectivity in Expressionist art, writing that "[t]he symbolist movement is

clearly and consciously one-dimensional from the outset, for the gulf between the

sensuous incarnation of a symbol and its symbolic meaning arises from the narrow,

single-tracked process of subjective association which yokes them together" (43). In

other words, the art uses its energy to be subjective, sacrificing its bid for the universal in

the process.

 Lukacs also raises the second objection to the Expressionist movement, namely

 that the political/critical stance of the artists does not make the sort of revolutionary

 progress that they hoped it would. He points out that their stance served as a way to ease

 the transition from one ideological center to another. He further argues that the artists

 unintentionally prevented the transition by giving the status quo too much help. If the

 ruling authority hadn't had the help, the revolution may have happened. However, he

 writes, ". .. to the extent that Expressionism really had any ideological influence, its

 effect was to discourage rather than promote the process of revolutionary clarification